King Snarf wrote:I always HATED some of the made up stuff, as that really destroys the connection that this is just like our world. Gamestation and *ugh* SODER Cola. The worst though is that people don't watch Letterman or Leno, they watch Whitty Banter (get it? His first name's probably Whitman, but as a nickname it sounds like "witty"! ... Kill me.) When I first saw it, I thought it was a typo. There was a scene where Kyle Rayner was flirting/ working with a model, and he says, "How about some Whitty Banter?" and she in her somewhat revealing attire says "Oh, I LOVE Whitty Banter!" and I'm thinking, "It's good that they find conversation a good romantic stimulator, but MAN is that some odd pillow talk."

Yeah it was annoyingly cutsie.

I choose to focus on the good stuff like the Tv show "I'm Jack Ryder & you're wrong" or Radu's (since you've already cited Kyle Rayner). Strangely i have never felt the need to name a coffee fanchise in my setting: Maybe its the fact that Western Australia (where i reside), unlike the East Coast doesn't really indulge in the coffee culture thing to that level, so its never been something any of my players think about.

“Anti-Intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge’.”-Isaac Asimov

If they didn't use the made up stuff, they'd have all sorts of issues with the manufacturers of real products. Using fake names is just far easier than working through the logistics of product-licensing.

Didio was the guy who green lit Final Crisis & hated the book '52', only to call his failed 'Countdown' series "52 done right." The same guy who wanted to kill off Nightwing & brought back Barry Allen... I think clown might be understating it just a little... Arse-clown would certianly be closer.

Some very good points being made here; even Joss Whedon, the master of screwing with characters' lives, allows his characters to have boatloads of happiness before he (almost inevitably) takes it away. The communal dinner scenes on 'Serenity' are the sort of things that keep the characters happy and moderately sane between dramatic traumas.

I do think the Flash (up until recently, at least) has been the model of how to do this right, and it makes a wonderful contrast to the frequently sucky world of the Bat family. Superman is also pretty happy in most of his best incarnations.

Heritage367 wrote:Some very good points being made here; even Joss Whedon, the master of screwing with characters' lives, allows his characters to have boatloads of happiness before he (almost inevitably) takes it away. The communal dinner scenes on 'Serenity' are the sort of things that keep the characters happy and moderately sane between dramatic traumas.

I do think the Flash (up until recently, at least) has been the model of how to do this right, and it makes a wonderful contrast to the frequently sucky world of the Bat family. Superman is also pretty happy in most of his best incarnations.

The quest for uniformity seems quite detrimental. Sure, some characters tend to work well with a certain level of instability and unhappiness. As much as I like Mary Jane, I can understand why the marriage was removed to bring Spider-Man back to the romantic entanglements that were so prevalent for much of the character's history and it fits the "everyman soap opera" style of Spider-Man. It can work for Spider-Man. Tragedy and pain work for characters like Batman and Daredevil (though Mark Waid's much less wangsty current run is one of my favorite runs of Daredevil). Even Wonder Woman has the "stranger in a strange land" element to work with.

But being an unhappy angsty loner just doesn't work for Superman IMHO. Superman has always been meant for Lois Lane and vice versa from day one. Even at the height of Silver Age madness, there was never a "Superman's Girlfriend Lana Lang or maybe Lori Lemaris" series. Superman's angst comes from there being limits to what he can do and his innate goodness making those limits unacceptable to him. I can't think of a single good Superman story involving him feeling like an outsider or struggling with his love life (excluding the standard secret identity woes). It just doesn't work for him. He's an aspirational figure. Fallible, yes, but being unhappy doesn't improve him as a character. Trying to force him into a different mold just doesn't work. He's too iconic.

And, as previously mentioned, a lack of contrast just makes all the tragedy seem flat. There were a lot of unhappy personal lives in the Iron Age. That didn't make those comics good.

"This is all your fault! You shouldn't have taken that cat! You don't teleport into strange metal places and steal pets!"Builds